-LRB- Mental Floss -RRB- -- Perhaps your history teachers failed to alert you to these Civil War facts : Jefferson Davis nearly got mugged by an angry female mob ; Abraham Lincoln loved the Confederate anthem `` Dixie , '' and Paul Revere was a Civil War casualty .

`` Dixie '' was was a huge hit across the country and quickly became one of Abraham Lincoln 's favorite tunes .

The Civil War , in addition to being among the defining moments of U.S. history , is also the source of some bizarre and surprisingly cool trivia .

1 . Lincoln 's first solution to slavery was a fiasco

Early in his presidency , Abe was convinced that white Americans would never accept black Americans . `` You and we are different races , '' the president told a committee of `` colored '' leaders in August 1862 . '' ... But for your race among us there could not be war ... It is better for us both , therefore , to be separated . ''

Lincoln proposed voluntary emigration to Central America , seeing it as a more convenient destination than Liberia . This idea did n't sit well with leaders like Frederick Douglass , who considered colonization to be `` a safety valve ... for white racism . ''

Luckily for Douglass -LRB- and the country -RRB- , colonization failed spectacularly . One of the first attempts was on Île à Vache , a.k.a. Cow Island , a small isle off the coast of Haiti .

The island was owned by land developer Bernard Kock , who claimed he had approved a black American colony with the Haitian government .

No one bothered to call him on that claim .

Following a smallpox outbreak on the boat ride down , hundreds of black colonizers were abandoned on the island with no housing prepared for them , as Kock had promised .

To make matters worse , the soil on Cow Island was too poor for any serious agriculture . In January 1864 , the Navy rescued the survivors from the ripoff colony . Once Île à Vache fell through , Lincoln never spoke of colonization again.Mental Floss : 6 Historical Events People Love to Reenact

2 . Hungry ladies effectively mugged Jefferson Davis

The Confederacy 's image hinged on the notion that the rebellious states made up a unified , stable nation .

However , the hard times of war exposed just how much disunity there was in Dixieland .

Civilians in both the North and South had to cope with scarcity and increased food prices , but the food situation was especially bad in the South because outcomes on the battlefield were directly linked to the CSA 's currency -- rising food prices were hard enough to deal with without wild fluctuations in what the money in your pocket could buy .

Invading northern troops , of course , poured salt on the wounds of scarcity , burning crops and killing livestock . But in Richmond , Virginia , those who could n't afford the increasingly pricey food blamed the Confederate government . Hungry protesters , most of whom were women , led a march `` to see the governor '' in April 1863 that quickly turned violent .

They overturned carts , smashed windows , and drew out Governor John Letcher and President Jefferson Davis .

Davis threw money at the protesters , trying to get them to clear out , but the violence continued . So , he threatened to order the militia to open fire , which settled things down pretty quickly .

3 . The Union used hot air balloons and submarines

The balloons , directed by aeronaut Thaddeus Lowe , were used to spot enemy soldiers and coordinate Federal troop movements . During his first battlefield flight , at First Bull Run , Lowe landed behind Confederate lines , but he was rescued .

The Union Army Balloon Corps got no respect from military officials , and Lowe resigned when he was assigned to serve , at a lower pay grade , under the director of the Army Corps of Engineers .

In all , the balloonists were active for a little under two years . Mental Floss : 7 Modern Flying Car Designs

In contrast , the paddle-powered Alligator submarine saw exactly zero days of combat -LRB- which is why it ca n't officially be called the U.S.S. Alligator -RRB- .

It suffered from some early testing setbacks , but after some speed-boosting tweaks , it was dispatched for Port Royal , South Carolina , with an eye towards aiding in the sack of Charleston . It was to be towed south by the U.S.S. Sumpter , but it had to be cut loose off of North Carolina on April 2 , 1863 , when bad weather struck .

Divers and historians are still looking for the Alligator today .

But the undersea capers do n't end there . A few months after the loss of the Alligator , the CSA launched their own submarine , the H.L. Hunley , named after its inventor .

The Hunley attacked and sank the U.S.S. Housatonic off the coast of Charleston , making it the first submarine ever to sink an enemy ship .

The only problem is that it also sank soon afterwards , and all eight crewmen drowned .

4 . `` Dixie '' was only a northern song

The precise details of when composer Dan Emmett wrote `` Dixie '' seemed to change every time he told the story -LRB- and some even dispute that Emmett was the author in the first place -RRB- .

But he first performed it in New York City in 1859 , with the title `` I Wish I Was in Dixie 's Land . ''

Emmett was a member of a blackface troupe known as the Bryant 's Minstrels , but he was indignant when he found out that his song had become an unofficial anthem of the Confederacy .

He went on to write a musicians ' marching manual for the Northern army .

Before and during the war , the song was a huge hit in New York and across the country , and quickly became one of Abraham Lincoln 's favorite tunes .

The day after the Surrender at Appomattox , Lincoln told a crowd of Northern revelers , `` I have always thought ` Dixie ' was one of the best tunes I have ever heard . Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it , but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it . ''

He then asked a nearby band to play it in celebration .

5 . Paul Revere was at Gettysburg

Paul Joseph Revere , that is the famous Paul Revere 's grandson .

Unfortunately for fans of the first Revere and his partly mythical Ride , PJR was in the infantry , not the cavalry , with the 20th Massachusetts .

He and his brother Edward were captured at the Battle of Ball 's Bluff in October 1861 . After being released in a prisoner exchange , the Reveres rejoined the fight .

Paul was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in September , 1862 , shortly before he was wounded in the brutal Battle of Antietam -LRB- a.k.a. the Battle of Sharpsburg -RRB- .

Edward , however , was n't so lucky -- he was one of more than 2,000 Union soldiers who did n't make it out of Sharpsburg , Maryland , alive .

By the following year , Paul was promoted again to Colonel , leading the 20th Massachusetts at Chancellorsville and , in his final days , at Gettysburg .

On July 3 , 1863 , he was mortally wounded by a shell fragment that pierced his lung , and he died the next day .

He was posthumously promoted again to Brigadier General , and is buried in Cambridge , Massachusetts.Mental Floss : 10 Things to Remember About Memorial Day

6 . Mark Twain fired one shot and then left

At least , that 's what he claimed in `` The Private History of a Campaign that Failed , '' a semi-fictional short story published in 1885 , after The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , but before A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur 's Court .

In it , he recounts a whopping two weeks spent in 1861 with a Confederate militia in Marion County , Missouri . But he introduces the tale by saying that even the people who enlisted at the start of the war , and then left permanently , `` ought at least be allowed to state why they did n't do anything and also to explain the process by which they did n't do anything . Surely this kind of light must have some sort of value . ''

Twain writes that there were fifteen men in the rebel militia , the `` Marion Rangers , '' and he was the second lieutenant , even though they had no first lieutenant .

After Twain 's character shoots and kills a Northern horseback rider , he is overwhelmed by the sensation of being a murderer , `` that I had killed a man , a man who had never done me any harm . That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow . ''

However , his grief is slightly eased by the realization that six men had fired their guns , and only one had been able to hit the moving target .

7 . The armies were n't all-male

Hundreds of women on both sides pulled a Mulan , assuming male identities and appearances so that they might fight for their respective nations .

Some of them did it for adventure , but many did it for monetary reasons : the pay for a male soldier was about $ 13 month , which was close to double what a woman could make in any profession at the time .

Also , being a man gave someone a lot more freedoms than just being able to wear pants . Remember , this was still more than half a century away from women 's suffrage and being a man meant that you could manage your monthly $ 13 wages independently .

So it should come as no surprise that many of these women kept up their aliases long after the war had ended , some even to the grave .

Their presence in soldiers ' ranks was n't the best-kept secret . Some servicewomen kept up correspondence with the home front after they changed their identities , and for decades after the war newspapers ran article after article chronicling the stories of woman soldiers , and speculating on why they might break from the accepted gender norms .

Perhaps not surprisingly , in 1909 the U.S. Army denied that `` any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States as a member of any organization of the Regular or Volunteer Army at any time during the period of the civil war . ''

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Hundreds of women in both armies dressed as men so they could serve

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Confederate anthem `` Dixie '' was a favorite of Abraham Lincoln 's

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Confederate President Jefferson Davis was effectively mugged by a gang of women

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Paul Revere 's grandson fought at the Battle of Gettysburg